Everyday Aesthetics Yuriko Saito OXFORD UNIVERSITY PRESSI Neglect of Everyday Aesthetics Our aesthetic life is rich and multifaceted. Its objects range from conven- tional forms of Western art, such as paintings, music, literature, dance, and theater, to newer art forms, such as happenings, performance, earth art, chance music, installation, and interactive art, not to mention art from non-Western traditions. Aesthetic objects also include nature and environment, popular entertainment provided by television, pop music, movies, sports, and games, as well as daily activities such as eating, walking, and dressing up. Sometimes our aesthetic interests and concerns generate memorable aesthetic experiences, while other times they simply lead to further thoughts, judgments, or actions, without Inspiring special moments that stand out from the flow of our daily affairs, This multifaceted nature of our aesthetic life poses a challenge for defining its distinguishing characteristics. Accordingly, various attempts have been made. Some hold that “the aesthetic” refers to certain qualities, such as gracefulness and forcefulness, which are constituted by, but not reducible to, a set of sensory qualities. Others contend that “the aesthetic” designates a special kind of experience. Yet others claim that it is a specific kind of attitude that renders an experience aesthetic. The notion of “the aesthetic” that I will be using throughout this book encompasses what these existing theories indicate, but much more. In the realm of “the aesthetic,” Tam including any reactions we form toward the sensuous and/or design qualities of any object, phenomenon, or activity.’ This means, first of all, " By invoking both the sensuous and design features, Iam agreeing with Noél Carroll’s “deflationary “ccoune” of aesthetic experience, in which “design appreciation and quality detection are each disianctively sufficient conditions for aesthetic experience.” It is because “one could apprehend the aesthetic qualities of a work without scrutinizing its form, or examine the structure of the work Without detecting its aesthetic qualities.” “Four Concepts of Aesthetic Experience” in Beyond Aesthetics: Philosophical Essays (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2001), p. 60. Another reason I specify both isto be able to account for the typical experience of literature, which usually does not involve theIO EVERYDAY AESTHETICS my notion of “the aesthetic” is decidedly not honorific, in contrast to its common usage as well as what many attempts to define the aesthetic imply. As some recent writers point out, our aesthetic life includes not only pleasant, but also unpleasant experiences characterized as depressing, disgusting, or dreary. In my view, the aesthetic further includes reactions toward qualities such as dingy, nondescript, or plain-looking, which may or may not be accompanied by emotionally tinged quality like disgust. My negative, though mild, reaction to a dingy-looking wall, no matter how trivial and unsophisticated, I believe is an aesthetic reaction. This example suggests another way in which my view on the aesthetic expands on the existing theories. I include in the realm of the aesthetic those experiences that stand out from the flow of everyday experiences, aes- thetic experience par excellence according to traditional aesthetic experience theories. These experiences perhaps constitute the core of our aesthetic life. However, I hold that an aesthetic reaction can also be a seemingly insignificant, and sometimes almost automatic, response we form in our everyday life. It can be our response to everyday phenomena, such as mess and dirt. Furthermore, while aesthetic attitude theories emphasize the con- templative stance toward an object, I am including those aesthetic reactions that do not presuppose or lead to such spectator-like experiences but rather prompt us toward actions, such as cleaning, discarding, purchasing, and so on. Such is typically the way in which aesthetics functions in everyday life, as Arthur Danto points out, when “selecting garments or choosing sexual partners or picking a dog out of a litter or an apple out of a display of apples.””? My proposal to expand and diversify the domain of the aesthetic is analogous to Noél Carroll’s attempt to encompass different features of appreciation of the sensuous, such as the visual image of the printed pages or the sound of the sentences (of course excepting many examples of poetry, visual poetry, and literary works written in Japanese) “Design” may not be a typical term used to describe features of literature, but I am using it to include things like character development, plot organization, and the like. By emphasizing the sensuous and design as the focus of the aesthetic, I am not denying the aesthetic relevance of the conceptual. On the contrary, as my subsequent discussion will illustrate, even the seemingly simple reaction, such as our response to the “unsightly” stain or “dirty” spot on our shirt, upon closer examination, tums out to be dependent upon further conceptual and contextual considerations, though rarely do we recognize, let alone articulate, such cognitive factors. Hence, in my view, although I am identifying the aesthetic with our responses to the sensuous and design, I am hot committed to the formalist aesthetics that excludes the cognitive from the realm of the aesthetic. ? Arthur Danto, The Abuse of Beauty: Aesthetics and the Concept of Art (Chicago: Open Court, 2003), P. 7-NEGLECT OF EVERYDAY AESTHETICS II experiences that are illuminated by different theories of aesthetic experience of art, thereby providing “a disjunctive set of sufficient conditions for categorizing aesthetic experiences of artworks.””* Specifically, according to him, aspecimen of experience is aesthetic ifit involves the apprehension/ comprehension by an informed subject... of the formal structures, aesthetic and/or expressive properties of the object, and/or the emergence of those features from the base properties of the work and/or of the manner in which those features interact with each other and/or address the cognitive, perceptual, emotive, and/or imaginative power of the subject. What I am proposing is to adopt a similar strategy to define the realm of the aesthetic by including not only such aesthetic experiences of art, however broadly defined, but also those responses that propel us toward everyday decision and actions, without any accompanying contemplative appreciation. Now, among these diverse dimensions of our aesthetic life, there seems to exist an implicit hierarchy that pervades today’s academic discourse on aesthetics. Despite the recent inclusion of nature, popular culture, and other aspects of our daily life, the core subject matter of philosophical aesthetics seems to remain Western fine arts. Other objects are almost always discussed in terms of their affinity (or lack thereof) to such art. Even when the discussion focuses on the content, rather than the object, of our experience, the primary interest is an aesthetic experience as something special that stands out from ordinary experience in general. As a result, other dimensions of our aesthetic life that we engage in almost daily, in forming preferences, judgments, design strategies, or courses of action, become neglected. I find this hierarchical treatment of the diverse aspects of our aesthetic life both problematic and unfortunate for several reasons. First, the theoretically neglected area of our aesthetic life, that is, our aesthetic engagement with the world beyond art, often unaccompanied by a special aesthetic experience, offers a treasure trove of materials for investigation, not provided by art and special aesthetic experiences. Secondly, when we broaden our > Noél Carroll, “Aesthetic Experience: A Question of Content,” included in Contemporary Debates in Aesthetics and the Philosophy of Art, ed. Matthew Kieran (Malden: Blackwell Publishing, 2006), p. 89. The next passage is aso from p. 89.IZ EVERYDAY AESTHETICS perspective by adopting a multi-cultural, global viewpoint, we realize that what has been regarded as mainstream aesthetics based upon art and its experience turns out to be specific to, and circumscribed by, the practice primarily of the last two centuries in the West. However, aesthetic concerns and interests, with or without institutionalized art, seem universal. Furthermore, even within a society like ours with an established institutional artworld, as Victor Papanek points out, “‘it is possible to avoid theatre and ballet, never to visit museums or galleries, to spurn poetry and literature and to switch off radio concerts. Buildings, settlements and the daily tools of living however, form a web of visual impressions that are inescapable.’’* Finally, contrary to popular perception that “the aesthetic” deals with something either highly specialized and isolated from our daily concerns, namely art, or else something trivial and frivolous, not essential to our lives, such as beautification and decoration,> those neglected dimensions of our aesthetic life do have serious practical ramifications. They often affect and sometimes determine our worldview, actions, the character of a society, the physical environment, and quite literally the course of history.° By liberating the aesthetic discourse from the confines of a specific kind of object or experience and illuminating how deeply entrenched and prevalent aesthetic considerations are in our mundane everyday existence, I hope to restore aesthetics to its proper place in our everyday life and to reclaim its status in shaping us and the world. As a first step of this exploration, in this chapter 1 will review two major directions of modern Western aesthetics: art-centered aesthetics and aesthetic experience-oriented aesthetics. I shall argue how both directions unduly compromise the rich diversity of our aesthetic life and how this problem not only impoverishes the content of aesthetic discourse but also fails to account adequately for the important ways in which the aesthetic profoundly affects the quality of life and the state of the world. * Victor Papanek, The Green Imperative: Natural Design for the Real World (New York: Thames & Hudson, 1995), p. 174. * The term “aesthetic” is often used in commercial enterprise dealing with our physical appearance, such as The American Society for Aesthetic Plastic Surgery, Aesthetic Dental Care, and Aesthetic Rejuvenation Center (taken from my phone book). Larry Shiner, one of the reviewers of the earlier draft, pointed out that in France what we call “beautician” is called “‘esthétician.” © I give some specific examples to illustrate this point throughout the rest of the book.NEGLECT OF EVERYDAY AESTHETICS 13 1. Art-centered aesthetics i. Art as the model for aesthetic object I believe it is safe to assume that no aestheticians will dispute the claim that there is no theoretical limit to what can become the object of an aesthetic experience.’ Except for some things that are extremely dangerous, evil, or physically over-taxing (such as a deafening sound), the catholicity of possible aesthetic objects is generally accepted. Even with respect to those exceptions, either a case can be made for their possibly sublime appeal, or, if they cannot or should not be appreciated aesthetically, the reason cited is usually not aesthetic, but psychological, moral, or physical. However, it is also commonly observed that in the actual practice of aesthetics, art is almost always regarded as the quintessential model for an aesthetic object. In discussing how the notion of disinterestedness was formulated by the eighteenth-century British aestheticians as a way of defining aesthetic experience in general, Jerome Stolnitz observes that “this catholicity in the denotation of ‘aesthetic object’ ... has gone strangely unremarked.”* Similarly, Thomas Leddy points out that “although many aestheticians insist that aesthetic qualities are not limited to the arts, even those thinkers generally take the arts as the primary focus of their discussion.””? These observations are confirmed most notably by the content of standard textbooks used for teaching aesthetics. Many are anthologies with ? This point has been stressed by a number of writers, starting with Jerome Stolnitz, whose view represents the so-called aesthetic attitude theory. He holds that “anything at all, whether sensed or perceived, whether it is the product of imagination or conceptual thought, can become the object of aesthetic attention.” Aesthetics and the Philosophy of Art Criticism, originally published in 1960, included in Introductory Readings in Aesthetics, ed. John Hospers (New York: The Free Press, 1966), p. 27. The same point is made by Paul Ziff who contends that “anything that can be viewed is a fit object for aesthetic attention,” including “‘a gator basking on a mound of dried dung.” “Anything Viewed,” originally published in 1984, included in Oxford Readers: Aesthetics, eds. Susan L. Feagin and Patrick Maynard (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1997), pp. 29 and 23. He reiterates the point by saying: “one can view things in the world aesthetically without being concerned with or inhibited by their lack of status as artefacts.” (p. 24). More recently, a number of writers make a point of including nature, popular culture, and life itself as aesthetic objects. * Jerome Stolnitz, “On the Origins of ‘Aesthetic Disinterestedness’,” originally published in The Journal of Aesthetics and Art Criticism (Winter 1961), included in Aesthetics: A Critical Anthology, eds. George Dickie and R. J. Sclafani (New York: St. Martin's Press, 1977), p. 624. ” Thomas Leddy, “Everyday Surface Aesthetic Qualities: ‘Neat,’ ‘Messy,’ ‘Clean,’ ‘Dirty,’” The Journal of Aesthetics and Art Criticism 53:3 (1995), p. 259.I4 EVERYDAY AESTHETICS obligatory sections on the definition of art, the artist’s intention, expression in art, the function of art criticism, interpretation of art, objectivity of aesthetic judgment, as well as issues specific to individual art media. An underlying assumption seems to be that art, however it is defined, provides the model for aesthetic objects, and the aesthetic status of things outside the artistic realm is determined by the degree of their affinity to art. The only topic that takes the discussion beyond art is the notion of aesthetic experience/attitude, but even its treatment, as I will discuss later, implicitly takes our experience of art as the model for aesthetic experience.'® This narrowing of the range of aesthetic objects is not unique to philosophical aesthetics, as pointed out by an anthropologist who complains that “progress in the anthropological study of visual aesthetics has been hampered by an undue concentration on art and art objects.”""! In a less academic, yet still educational, setting, our primary and secondary education relegates aesthetic education to specific classes, notably art, music, and to some extent literature. These courses usually adhere to an established practice, by appreciating and analyzing works of art and/or creating objects with those established works of art as their model and guide. For this reason, Paul Duncum makes “‘a case for an art education of everyday aesthetic experiences,” because he believes, and I agree, that “ordinary, everyday aesthetic experiences are more significant than experiences of high art in forming and informing one’s identity and view of the world beyond personal experience.” This is particularly true for young children, as “for the great majority of children, the many sites of everyday aesthetic experiences outside the world sanctioned by art institutions are likely ... to be even more powerful in forming and informing minds.” I shall call this mainstream tendency of aesthetics “‘art-centered aesthet- ics,” for it takes art and its appreciation as the core of our aesthetic life. The “‘art” and its experience that is essential to what I call art-centered "© In this regard, Aesthetics in Perspective, ed. Kathleen M. Higgins (Fort Worth: Harcourt Brace & Company, 1996) is noteworthy for its substantial sections on “Beyond Traditional Models,” “Popular Culture and Everyday Life,” and “Aesthetics around the World.” 1 Jeremy Coote, ‘Marvels of Everyday Vision’: The Anthropology of Aesthetics and the Cattle- Keeping Nilotes,” included in Anthropology, Art and Aesthetics, eds. Jeremy Coote and Anthony Shelton (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1992), p. 245. 1 Paul Duncum, “A Case for an Art Education of Everyday Aesthetic Experiences,” Studies in Art Education 40:4 (Summer 1999), p. 296. The following passage is also from the same page. As much 2s I agree with his view, I believe he does not go far enough in his promotion of everyday aesthetic sites. I will take up this point later in this chapter (2. iii).NEGLECT OF EVERYDAY AESTHETICS 15, aesthetics is primarily paradigmatic Western art, such as a Rembrandt painting, a Beethoven symphony, or a Shakespearean sonnet, the typical examples of art enumerated by those who are versed in Western art his- tory. Furthermore, most discussions regarding the definition of art even today take those paradigmatic Western art objects as a starting point to determine how far and in what way the familiar notion of art should be stretched. Of course today’s artworld and aesthetic theories have an expanded scope, including newer forms of art, such as James Turrell’s Roden Crater, Vito Acconci’s performance pieces, and Mierle Laderman Ukeles’s installation pieces, as well as non-Western art, such as Tibetan monks’ sand paintings and Navajo woven baskets. However, rarely are they cited as paradigm examples of art; instead, they are often treated as posing a challenge or an alternative to mainstream paradigmatic art. Later in this chapter (Section iii), I shall explore how this expanded scope of art affects my discussion of art-centered aesthetics; however, my initial examination of art-centered aesthetics will focus on paradigmatic Western art. What is noteworthy about art-centered aesthetics is that its discussion focuses exclusively on how art objects and their experiences differ from other objects and experiences. At the same time, any discussion regarding the aesthetic dimension of non-art objects is almost always conducted by examining to what extent they are similar to art. As a result, the aesthetics of non-art objects is typically discussed in terms of whether or not they can be considered art. I believe that this art-centered approach misconstrues the nature of our aesthetic lives, as well as unduly limits its scope. For example, citing the composition of parts as a characteristic of art, one discussion of food considers whether ordering of various tastes and smells is possible, concluding that “surely there are some serial orderings which people have long since noted concerning gustatory and olfacto- ty qualities.”"* Another debate regarding food revolves around whether its temporality, lack of representational content, and inability to “move” us disqualify it from art-hood.* Or another inquiry regarding chess as © Marienne L. Quinet, “Food as Art: The Problem of Function,” The British Joumal of Aesthetics 21:2 (Spring 1981), p. 167. ** Glenn Kuehn develops this debate in his response to Elizabeth Telfer’s argument against the att-bood of food. Sec his “How Can Food Be Art?,” included in The Aesthetics of Everyday Life, eds. Andrew Light and Jonathan M. Smith (New York: Columbia University Press, 2005). Carolyn Korsmeyer also examines this debate in ch. 4 of her Making Sense of Taste: Food and Philosophy (Ithaca: ‘Comell University Press, 1999).16 EVERYDAY AESTHETICS an art form argues that this game satisfies several requirements of art because the players create “something with the intention of rewarding aesthetic contemplation” with “‘‘artistic riches’ which are imperishable (...recorded in permanent form, using standard chess notation).” In addi- tion, “originality” is highly prized.'* As for sports, a pioneering work debates whether “any sport can justifiably be regarded as an art form” and concludes in the negative because the sports’ ultimate end, unlike art, is “not to produce performances for aesthetic pleasure.” Furthermore, sports cannot “consider ... issues of social concern,” such as “contemporary moral, social, political and emotional issues.’ In contrast, other com- mentators argue for the art-hood of sports by citing its playfulness and dramatic narrative structure, though improvised like jazz, culminating in a climax or ending with closure, as well as the virtue of graceful, effortless, or economical body movements featured in some.” Finally, when arguing for the art-hood of sports, Wolfgang Welsch characterizes its symbolic status and being an end in itself as “distant from ordinary life” and “separate from the everyday world” like art, and claims that “by neglecting the artlike character ... we ... fail to understand why it is so fascinating for a large public.”’® In general, however, non-art objects, not specifically or primarily cre- ated for generating aesthetic experience, do not provide coherent design, dramatic tension, or intense expressiveness to the same degree that many works of art do. Consequently, even when they are considered to be art or like art, they are treated as a kind of “wannabe” art or second-rate art, which falls short of those qualities expected in art. Calling this tendency 18 P.N. Humble, “Chess as an Art Form,” The British Journal of Aesthetics 33:1 (January 1993), pp. 61. 60-61, and 61 *% David Best, “The Aesthetic in Sport,” originally published in 1978, included in Philosophic Inquiry in Sport, ed. William J. Morgan and Klaus V. Meier (Champaign: Human Kinetics Publishers, 1988), pp. 487, 488, and 488. Best is credited for distinguishing art from aesthetics and arguing for the presence of aesthetic qualities in sports while denying their art-hood. He calls attention to “the distinction which is almost universally overlooked or oversimplified, and therefore misconceived, between the aesthetic and the artistic” (p. 487). 17 For example, see “‘Sport—The Body Electric” by Joseph H. Kupfer, originally published in 1983, included in Morgan and Meier, Joseph H. Kupfer, “Waiting for DiMaggio: Sport as Drama,” Drew Hyland, “‘When Power Becomes Gracious’: The Affinity of Sport and Art,” and Ted Coben, “Sports and Art: Beginning Questions,” all included in Rethinking College Athletics, eds. Judith Andre and David James (Philadelphia: Temple University Press, 1991). 18 Wolfgang Welsch, “Sport Viewed Aesthetically, and Even as Art?,” included in Light and Smith, pp. 142 and 149, emphasis added.NEGLECT OF EVERYDAY AESTHETICS 17 “art chauvinism” when applied to the aesthetics of environment, Yrjo Sepanmaa points out its “danger of putting the environment in second place.” Carolyn Korsmeyer also makes a similar point regarding food: “the addition of taste and food to the domain of established aesthetic theory presents problems: both inevitably come off distinctly second rate, trailing the distance senses and fine art.""*° Even those who argue for the art-hood of non-art objects and phenomena, accordingly, often admit that they do not have the same degree of those qualities that make other objects bona fide art. Welsch, for example, concedes that “sport best fills in for the everyday longings of art. But it cannot substitute for Schonberg, Pollock, or Godard.””* The problem of establishing a mono-framework for aesthetic discourse is not limited to this implied hierarchy. Perhaps more importantly, it impoverishes the scope of investigation by neglecting those features shared by many non-art objects and practices, which tend to disqualify them from being art-like. Such non-art features include absence of definite and identifiable object-hood and authorship, our literal engagement, transience and impermanence of the object, and the primacy of practical values of the object. Typically, either the art-hood of non-art objects is rejected for embodying too many disqualifying features, or their art-hood is established by an argument that, contrary to the first impression, they actually do satisfy requirements for art-hood. In the former case, somehow we are led to believe that rejection from the art-hood renders them aesthetically inferior or impoverished, depriving us of the opportunity for an aesthetic treasure bunt. In the latter case, on the other hand, Sepanmaa warns us that “the environment is easily forced into a foreign mode of observation by raising the similarities to art to a more exalted position than the environment’s own system would grant them.” In a similar vein, commenting on the art-hood of food, Korsmeyer also cautions that “the concept of art, dominated as it is today by the idea of fine art, is a poor category to capture the nature of foods and their consumption. While one earns a bit of stature for food by © ¥qj6 Sepinmaa, “The Utilization of Environmental Aesthetics,” included in Real World Design: The Foundation and Practice of Environmental Aesthetics, ed. Yrj8 Sepinmaa (Helsinki: University of eink’, 1995), p. 8, and “The Two Aesthetic Cultures: The Great Analogy of an Art and the be ” included in Environment and the Arts: Perspectives on Environmental Aesthetics, ed. Arnold ‘Beddeant (Hants: Ashgate, 2002), p. 42. + ® Korsmeyer, p. 66. 2 Welsch, p. 150, emphasis added. ® Sepinmaa, “Two Aesthetic Cultures,” p. 42.18 EVERYDAY AESTHETICS advancing it as an art form, the endeavor is apt to divert attention from the interesting ways in which the aesthetic importance of foods diverges from parallel values in art.” Either way, these disqualifying characteristics are never explored for their possible aesthetic significance. However, the fact that these features count against something being an art object does not mean that they are aesthetically uninteresting, insignificant, or irrelevant. It is quite the contrary. In the next section, I shall take those salient features of paradigmatic art and illustrate how focusing on them will lead us to overlook other aspects of our aesthetic life, which are equally as interesting and important as those characteristics of art. ii. Characteristics of paradigmatic art a. Frame One feature of paradigmatic art is that its ingredients are more or less determined, primarily according to conventional expectations and the artist’s control of the material. Painting is confined to the visual elements of one side of the canvas within the frame viewed from a certain distance while standing straight.”* Its smell of fresh paint, its relationship to the surrounding wallpaper, the back of the canvas, and its upside down view, no matter how intriguing, are to be intentionally bracketed. Our experience of a symphony consists of the sounds conforming to the score created by the musicians on the stage. The outside traffic noise, the cough of the audience, the feel of air-conditioned breeze blowing on our face, and the texture of the seat, are again consciously ignored, though they are part of our experience contemporaneous with the symphonic sound.* Despite various controversies regarding what is and is not a part of a work of art, in general, an art object presents itself to us more or less with a determinate boundary. Sometimes the frame is supplied literally as in the frame of a painting, but, more importantly, it is derived from our conceptual understanding such as the conventional agreement concerning 2% Korsmeyer, p. 141. % For the purpose of the present discussion, Iam going to generalize and discount possible counter- examples, many of which are both intriguing and important. To give one example, Paul Ziff considers the possibility of not being able to ignore the surrounding wall, if we are “viewing a yellow version of Josef Albers’ Homage to the Square displayed in a yellow frame on a yellow stuccoed wall,” in “Anything Viewed,” p. 27. 2 John Cage broke away from this convention governing Wester classical music by declaring all “aoise” is part of his music, illustrated by 4° 33”. ‘The revolutionary character of his stance and his music underscores the deeply entrenched assumption of what qualifies as musical sounds. I thank Larry Shiner for pointing out Cage’s example.